Ireland: Day 4

The body is week, but the spirit is stronger!
That is how I felt today. The lack of sleep and constant action has starting to get to me, and to other people in the group. I again had few hours of sleep less last night than I would have wanted or needed, so my body was telling about it this morning. My throat was really stiff and just I felt really weak. For breakfast the lady serving was so nice and made me specially an instant coffee, which is a bit stronger than the filter coffee they usually serve. I knew I have to mentally push myself today, because I didn’t want to miss anything just because the tiredness was pulling me down.
Today’s itinerary was busy, but in the best possible way when you are tired. We were on the bus a lot. We toured the Ring of Kerry today. It is drive around the peninsula west of Killarney around a gorge formed during the last ice age. We first passed through Killorglin famous for a pegan summer festival, the King Puck (pronounced pok) fair, which means male goat. The houses are different colors, with beautiful gardens and lawns. We saw a many bushes with the beautiful purple flowers, rodadendron. The bush with little red flowers like the earrings is called Fuchsia, in Irish Dura Dei, meaning tears of God. noticed that many don’t have any shades or blinds on the windows, probably to soak up the most of the sun they can.
Then we saw first glimpses of the Dingle Bay, which enters into the Atlantic Ocean. The views were breathtaking. Since this coast was formed from glaciers, there were chains of islands in the distance. We saw the most westwardly European island far in the distance. The coast has high granite cliffs, and some coves have nice sand beaches. The water in the summer gets to about 17 C (~65F), so it’s a bit chilly for me, but not for the locals. The vegetation changed to more rocky terrain and lushes vegetation was replaced with tall grass, swagman or peet moss (bog, which means soft plant), with medicinal characteristics used during the wars to treat the soldiers. Today it is dried and made into bricks used for fire.

In Kells we stopped at Caitin’s Kells where a world famous (apparently he was on some travel show) shepherd introduces visitors with several different types of sheep that live in Ireland. Among others we saw Shetland and moher sheep, which are known for their wool. The shepherd then showed us amazing interaction he has with his two border collies, which help him move the sheep. He uses a whistle to call each of them with a different set of sounds. One dog has his own left, right, straight, down,… calls, and the other has her own. They are so focused on their task and followed every command they received. When told to get down, they would still intently watch the sheep, with their ears perched for the next call. This was their true calling.

Video: shepherd, sheep, and dogs from Ireland

Next little town was Caherciveen where Daniel O’Connel was born (his large black status was on the main street in Dublin). We made it down to the water in Waterville, and took some pictures with Charlie Chaplin. He used to come there on vacation, and his family still owns a home there.

Farther more, between Caherdaniel and Derrynane we stopped for lunch in Vista Bar restaurant, we amazing views of the ocean and the islands. I had sea food chowder, with Irish coffee. Hmm-good.

On our way back west, we had a short stop in Sneem village and looked at some souvenir shops. Even though this place was not on open ocean, and more south than other places, I felt most cold there, even with my 4 layers of clothing. Maybe because we spend extra time outside there. It was already passed 3 PM when we continued toward Killarney National Park.

The scenery again changed to really tall trees and beautiful glacier lakes. Queen Victoria named one of the overlook spots the Ladies View, because all of the ladies in her party really enjoyed it. I believe Queen Elizabeth is supposed to tour the ring of Kerry in the next couple of days.

At 5 a quick stop at our hotel to change, and we were off to sing at Mass and concert afterwards at St. Mary’s cathedral in Killarney. The cathedral is just 150 years old, which for this country is a young church. It is actually the youngest church in Killarney from what I understand. It is made entirely of stone, and has some 40 ft tall arched ceiling. A beautiful architecture, but definitely more bear than other churches we’ve been to. We were not the only visitors at the Mass; there was another group from the US with their priest who concelebrated the Mass. We sang the Mass, and afterwards had a little concert for the folks who were there.
I was feeling different for this one, and I could not understand why. Even during the Mass, while the spirit was reminding me of the beauty of the moment, my mind was somewhere else. The acoustics of the place made it harder for me to hear others in the same way, and I just didn’t feel as concentrated and “in the moment”. I blame it on the tiredness. I found myself remembering the same moment we sang a certain song at the previous two places, and how more moving it felt. Before we also didn’t have a captive audience for the entire time, like we did tonight, so it had felt more like we sang just for ourselves, to enjoy the music. The audience tonight, the parishioners and few visitors at Mass, just didn’t give us much visual feedback that they were enjoying our singing as much as I thought we were supposed to be good. That’s maybe it; I wanted us to bring to these people the same awesomeness of the music we experienced the last two days, instead of just trying to be in that moment today. But it was hard to repeat that.

I was pretty much beat when we got to hotel. I still wanted to walk to the town for dinner, to see it for a little bit before we leave tomorrow. By 9 PM, a group of us finally gathered and explored the way through the little streets. Most pubs stop serving food around that time, so we were lucky to find Irish food served at a semi-italian restaurant. I don’t know how “authentic” it was, but the Guinness stew I had there was very testy. The company was great as well, and the atmosphere was fun and helped pick me up from my lousy weak state.

I just realized it’s almost 2 am and I have to be up at 7 am! Enough rambling. :)